Lesson video

Hi everyone, this is Mr. Chandrapala and I'm really looking forward to working with you today.

We get to discuss how some of the key characters in "Great Gatsby" are created today, and we're gonna be analysing Fitzgerald's craft in doing so.

And I really would stress the word craft, I think he's such a careful writer in the way that he constructs character, and I can't wait to see what comments you have about his work.

Let's dive in.

So our outcome for today is to be able to annotate a text and explain how the writer crafts a response from a reader.

Our keywords are the noun opulence, which is the extreme wealth and the luxuriousness often associated with lavish displays of extravagance.

We're gonna be talking about the writer's craft, which is the techniques and tools a writer uses to create and develop their writing.

We're gonna be talking about the adjective supercilious, which means to behave or look as though one thinks they are superior to others.

And finally, the verb elicit, which means to call forth or draw out.

So we're opening by discussing how we craft a specific response.

Now cast your mind back to last lesson.

What did we learn about the story of "The Great Gatsby" from the extract we read? Once you've had just a couple of quick thoughts about that, maybe checked back over the text or discuss with your partner, maybe jotted some ideas down, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone.

So you may have said that Nick Carraway, the narrator, rents a modest house in West Egg, near New York.

The fact that his house is beside Jay Gatsby's grand mansion.

Across the bay, East Egg houses the wealthy elite, including Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who was Nick's cousin.

The fact that Tom Buchanan, someone that Nick went to college or university with, is depicted as an arrogant and powerful man clinging to the past glories of his youth.

And Nick views Tom and Daisy's lifestyle as superficial and restless, but he does still seem impressed by it.

Now, we've recapped that extract, so we just need to now think about what we mean when we're talking about writer's craft.

Again I want you to pause the video and I want you to discuss with the person next to you or jot down some ideas.

What do we mean by craft? Once you've done so, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone.

So when we're talking about writer's craft, we're really thinking about the way that they are precisely choosing specific words to communicate key ideas to their audience.

So you might have said things like language choices, so words chosen to describe characters and key events, or structural choices such as when key events occur.

You may be thinking about characterizations which is a presentation of when characters are introduced, or even setting, which is where a story is set and the mood it creates with even the time of day.

And we may think about how these deliberate choices are made to elicit a specific response from the reader.

So all of these choices, all of these ways of crafting the text are made to bring a response from us.

Now remember that whilst a writer might try to elicit a specific response, the way we respond to the text is always personal.

There is a difference between actually what the writer is trying to do and what you end up feeling sometimes, and that's absolutely fine.

Sometimes characters are made to or should be presented as sympathetic, sometimes we just don't feel sympathy for them.

That's absolutely fine.

So as long as you can justify your idea, we're good to go.

So we're just gonna cast our mind back to East Egg.

I've got a quote here.

"Across the courtesy bay, the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water." I want you to pause the video again and I want you to turn to the person next to you and talk about what your initial thoughts about East Egg are.

Pause the video and once you've done that, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone.

Lots of different things being said there.

Some people are interested in that word fashionable, thinking about the fact that there's a sort of superficial nature to it.

Maybe there's a veneer or an appearance of it looking quite wonderful but actually there's something darker underneath.

The idea of palaces and sort of like the assumption of royalty, but also this being a place without a monarch, so maybe the fact that it sort of suggests the nature of the upper class.

And even that term glittered, why does it glitter? The connotations of glittered.

But we're now thinking about how has Fitzgerald crafted this sentence to create this response.

I've given a couple ideas.

I want you to pause the video and have a go.

What would you pick out here? How has he crafted this response from us? Once you've done so, hit play.

Excellent work there.

So we could say that the palaces make East egg seem opulent as the white palaces have connotations of royalty, or the fact that the word glittered has a sense of superficial glamour and that could suggest that all is not as it seems from the outside.

If these are impressive buildings, are they actually hiding secrets? So, a very quick check for understanding.

The white palaces on East Egg make it seem, A, opulent, B, superficial, or C, secretive? Pause the video, select an option, and when you're ready, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone.

We can say it is indeed opulent, so it's made to seem really wealthy and rich and luxurious.

We're just gonna practise putting all of this together now.

I want you to practise crafting a specific response.

Izzy was reading the following description of Gatsby's mansion.

"The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard.

It was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking you under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than 40 acres of lawn and garden." Izzy looked at that and said, well, "Gatsby's mansion is described simultaneously as both luxurious but also sinister in some way." I want you to highlight and annotate words in this description that may have elicited this opinion from Izzy.

So look at the extract from Gatsby's, sorry, from Fitzgerald's description of Gatsby's mansion and highlight and annotate words that you think would provoke or elicit the opinion from Izzy that Gatsby's mansion is simultaneously luxurious and also sinister.

Once you've done so, hit play and we'll give some feedback.

Excellent work there, everyone.

So let's have a look at what we could have said.

So you may have approached this task and wanted to talk about the fact that we have this imitation of some Hotel de Ville and the marble swimming pool, which makes it seem luxurious as it's an imitation of a famous hotel and it also seems to be made of marble, which is this really expensive natural stone.

You may have wanted to look at the phrase "thin beard of raw ivy," which really popped out to me in all honesty when I was reading it, because it's that example of personification, isn't it? The mansion seems somewhat sinister with that beard of raw ivy, perhaps hiding the building's secrets.

I wonder what my beard is hiding.

Now we're gonna work on how Fitzgerald crafts a specific response.

So I want you to cast your mind back.

What are your initial thoughts about the Buchanan mansion? So remember, Daisy and Tom live on the other egg away from Carraway and Gatsby.

How does Fitzgerald present Buchanan's mansion? What are your initial thoughts about it? Once you've had that discussion, gathered your thoughts, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone, so.

Izzy said that "to me, Fitzgerald uses language to present the Buchanan mansion as seemingly opulent but also a place filled with a restless energy." So it's luxurious but neither Daisy nor Tom are able to just sit down and enjoy it.

They are constantly looking for the next thing, they are restless, there's almost an unhappiness that drives them.

But what do you think led Izzy to make this comment? What would've provoked her to read the sort of description of Buchanan's mansion and actually view it as being opulent but restless? Have a discussion with your partners, maybe go back to text, try and pick out key evidence, and when you've done so, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone.

So, we're gonna have a look at how Izzy could annotate her text to justify the writer's craft that elicited this response.

So we're going to explore how Fitzgerald uses his craft to create an atmosphere of opulence and restless energy in the Buchanan House.

I'm going to read the extract on the left-hand side, and as I'm doing so I want you to just independently think to yourself how does Fitzgerald use the writer's craft or his writer's craft to present the mansion as opulent but also full of a restless energy.

Afterwards, I'll ask you to discuss this.

But for now, you're just independently reading with me and annotating as we go.

"Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian colonial mansion overlooking the bay.

The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for 1/4 of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens, finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.

The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm, windy afternoon." So I want you to pause the video.

After you have annotated the text independently, trying to find how Fitzgerald uses his writer's craft to present the mansion as opulent and also full of restless energy, I want you to turn to your partner and see if you can identify any quotes to support this.

There are multiple things that we could point out here.

Once you've done so, hit play.

Great work there, everyone.

Let's take some ideas.

So you may have looked at that opening, "The house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian colonial mansion overlooking the bay," and said, well, Fitzgerald is quick to emphasise the wealth and status of the Buchanans.

The use of the detailed description highlights the mansion's grandeur and sophistication with words like cheerful and Georgian, which convey its opulence.

You may also, though, say that there is a sort of sinister energy in the fact that it's described as a colonial mansion, and even may want to think about the fact that, well, this wasn't a place which actually would've really existed necessarily in the Georgian period.

Why is it built in a Georgian style? Why is it meant to be colonial? What does that maybe suggest about the Buchanans? Well, it may be suggest that they are trying to be this old money version of sort of Western Europe.

You may have looked at the terms jumping, burning and drifting, and actually how the Buchanan mansion is a place of restless energy.

These dynamic verbs, including ran and jump and drift, create a sense of movement and activity and they inject a feeling of continuous motion and energy into our introduction to this place.

They don't seem to be able just to sit still, they are constantly on the move, which could suggest to them or could suggest to us about them that they are never happy, that they are onwards, onwards, onwards all the time.

You may look at that final line, "The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm, windy afternoon," and you may actually consider how actually Fitzgerald emphasises the Buchanans' immense wealth and the grandeur of their home.

There's a sense of opulence here created through the mention of the French windows with the gold, which is a traditional symbol of wealth, luxury, and high status.

I also think that there's something about the fact that the front was broken by this light, maybe suggesting that actually there's almost a pretence being put up there, this is a superficial performance of this wealth.

So take a moment, just add any notes that you need to from this slide, and when you're ready, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone, so impressed with the way that you're all annotating so diligently and making sure that you've got the best notes for yourselves for later down the line.

So let's just have a quick check for our understanding here.

"The French windows glowing now with reflected gold" evoke a sense of, A, wealth and opulence, B, restless energy, or C, the American dream.

Pause the video, select A, B, or C, and when you're ready, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone.

It is indeed A, it's that wealth and opulence, the fact that we've got that reflected gold, that symbol of wealth really clearly demonstrated.

And even the fact that it's glowing, it's almost like a beacon that it's really saying something about the house.

So we're just gonna practise applying these skills.

On the left-hand side, I have a description of Tom Buchanan.

What I'm going to ask you to do is to read this description of Tom Buchanan independently.

You're then going to consider how you feel about Tom Buchanan based on this description, and I want you to annotate the extract explaining how Fitzgerald has crafted the paragraph to elicit this response from you.

You're going to do this by yourselves and you're going to need a little bit of time to do this.

So pause the video now, take a little bit of time.

You're going to need at least a pen or a pencil in your hand to make sure that you can annotate, and you're focusing on Tom Buchanan.

Once you've done so, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone.

Really impressed with the way that you've been able to go about that.

We're going to start breaking this down now and taking some feedback.

So here's how you may have wanted to approach the task.

I'd suggest having a different colour pen or a different colour pencil in your hand so that you can make notes as we're going through.

So if we start off with the fact that Buchanan is described as "a sturdy, straw haired man of 30 with a rather hard mouth than a supercilious manner," we could say that these adjectives paint Tom Buchanan as being physically robust and emotionally quite domineering, he's a dominant figure.

The adjective sturdy implies his strength and solidity, while hard mouth suggests the fact that he's inflexible, perhaps a sense of his determination.

Meanwhile, the supercilious manner conveys the arrogance and that sense of superiority that becomes so key later in the novel.

If we go further, those "two shining, arrogant eyes which had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward," well, these suggests his overbearing nature.

Fitzgerald focuses on the shining, arrogant eyes to symbolise his domineering attitude and his aggressive stance which contributes to this perception of his power.

He's really keen to show that he's more powerful than others in the text.

You may want to have a look at the line "not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body.

He seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing." Here, Fitzgerald suggests that Tom's power is so inherent, so based in him, so foundational to his nature, that it cannot be concealed in his outward appearances.

Not even the effeminate swank, this sort of feminine fashion of the riding clothes could hide the enormous power of his body, it's so clear.

The vivid imagery of Tom's body straining the top lacing of his boots, filling his clothes, highlights his physical strength and imposing stature.

He is clearly a really robust figure.

And finally, "You could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat.

It was a body capable of enormous leverage, a cruel body." Here, Fitzgerald crafts Tom as a powerful but simultaneously cruel character.

The description of muscles visibly shifting under his coat and the dynamic sense of Tom's physical power, it shows that he's again restless, he's always moving.

It emphasises his bodily strength and the potential for physical action in him.

The adding of cruelty at the very end of the line suggests that there is a menacing quality to him and it implies his power can be harsh and oppressive.

He's looking to dominate others, which again foreshadows his actions later in the text.

I've been so impressed by the way that you've been getting notes this entire time.

I'm just gonna ask you to pause the video, get down anything you need now, and when you're ready, hit play.

Excellent work there, everyone, really diligent.

So we've reached the end of today's lesson where we have been summarising "The Great Gatsby" and analysing a writer's craft.

We've looked at how writers will make deliberate choices in their writing to achieve specific effects, and this is known as writer's craft.

We also now understand that writers employ different word choices and language devices to create engaging characters and settings, and that personal responses to texts will take into account this writer's craft.

You have been absolutely fantastic.

You haven't been at all restless, you've been absolutely wonderful and I really appreciate all your efforts today.

Thank you so much for joining me and I really look forward to working with you again soon.

Bye for now, everyone.